For four years I've been fighting a running battle with the Chinese-speaking mothers in my childrens' school, who have been emphatically maintaining that the local PTO is a secretive, whites-only organization that gets special treatment for its insiders' children.
Recent developments have made my pro-PTO position completely untenable. I can no longer, based on the evidence available to me, deny that what they've been saying all along sure does look like the truth.
Is our local PTO secretive? Yup.
Whites-only? Last few times I looked.
Get special treatment for their children? Evidence circumstantial but overwhelming.
My poor daughter, who works so hard, and is so good, and through no fault of her own is probably the smartest and most talented kid in the school (she gets that from her mother) now finds herself in a Kafka-esque position where she's stymied at every turn by -- believe it or not -- the PTO.
